grizzly.anderson: Cheap and No Logo come at the consumer market from two distinct, yet complimentary, perspectives. No Logo examines the impact of the power and marketing of "the brand" while Cheap takes up the brand-less (except for the discount stores themselves) quest for discount "deals"… (more)

Some political activists can over-sell their ideology: I would be surprised were Naomi Klein's sternest critics to accuse her of that. She sets out her case both rationally and without drama. This makes her findings all the more disturbing.

In this, her first book, she takes on the big names of corporate branding. She explains how exploited workers in third world countries produce designer brands which are then sold, often to the poorer members of the richer countries populations, for exorbitant profits. Klein steers clear of making value judgements, but I defy the reader not to feel depressed. It doesn't matter whether you are a Communist, or a fully paid up capitalist; if you read, with as little prejudice as possible, you must surely come to the conclusion that this trend will not end well, for anyone. The third world poor are being paid less than a living wage, getting injured, or even killed, by dangerous practises and must be building animosity towards the west. The people of the west are being duped into paying over the odds for "designer" labels and losing their jobs to foreign workers and, even the 1% making vast profits at the moment, would see that their days are numbered. This is a bleak, but necessary read. Klein tries to put a brave face upon the situation, suggesting that change can and is coming. I, for one, remain to be convinced that we will make the amendments, so desperately needed, without bloodshed. ( )

Modern History. A populist-academic examination of brands and globalisation and their effects on worldwide labour. Quite a good insight into systemic corporate greed and the brewing backlash against it. Later chapters remind me of my own 'Control, Change and the Internet' in their vague attempt to grasp global culture. ( )

We live in an era where image is nearly everything, where the proliferation of brand-name culture has created, to take one hyperbolic example from Naomi Klein's No Logo, "walking, talking, life-sized Tommy [Hilfiger] dolls, mummified in fully branded Tommy worlds." Brand identities are even flourishing online, she notes--and for some retailers, perhaps best of all online: "Liberated from the real-world burdens of stores and product manufacturing, these brands are free to soar, less as the disseminators of goods or services than as collective hallucinations."

In No Logo, Klein patiently demonstrates, step by step, how brands have become ubiquitous, not just in media and on the street but increasingly in the schools as well. (The controversy over advertiser-sponsored Channel One may be old hat, but many readers will be surprised to learn about ads in school lavatories and exclusive concessions in school cafeterias.) The global companies claim to support diversity, but their version of "corporate multiculturalism" is merely intended to create more buying options for consumers. When Klein talks about how easy it is for retailers like Wal-Mart and Blockbuster to "censor" the contents of videotapes and albums, she also considers the role corporate conglomeration plays in the process. How much would one expect Paramount Pictures, for example, to protest against Blockbuster's policies, given that they're both divisions of Viacom?

Klein also looks at the workers who keep these companies running, most of whom never share in any of the great rewards. The president of Borders, when asked whether the bookstore chain could pay its clerks a "living wage," wrote that "while the concept is romantically appealing, it ignores the practicalities and realities of our business environment." Those clerks should probably just be grateful they're not stuck in an Asian sweatshop, making pennies an hour to produce Nike sneakers or other must-have fashion items. Klein also discusses at some length the tactic of hiring "permatemps" who can do most of the work and receive few, if any, benefits like health care, paid vacations, or stock options. While many workers are glad to be part of the "Free Agent Nation," observers note that, particularly in the high-tech industry, such policies make it increasingly difficult to organize workers and advocate for change.

But resistance is growing, and the backlash against the brands has set in. Street-level education programs have taught kids in the inner cities, for example, not only about Nike's abusive labor practices but about the astronomical markup in their prices. Boycotts have commenced: as one urban teen put it, "Nike, we made you. We can break you." But there's more to the revolution, as Klein optimistically recounts: "Ethical shareholders, culture jammers, street reclaimers, McUnion organizers, human-rights hacktivists, school-logo fighters and Internet corporate watchdogs are at the early stages of demanding a citizen-centered alternative to the international rule of the brands ... as global, and as capable of coordinated action, as the multinational corporations it seeks to subvert." No Logo is a comprehensive account of what the global economy has wrought and the actions taking place to thwart it. --Ron Hogan

28-year-old writer and journalist Naomi Klein describes the growing resistance to the multinational ethos, a world in which all that is alternative is sold, where innovation is adopted by faceless corporations as a marketing tool.